The Sin Within Her Smile

by Jonathan Gash

  She was concerned, but only because she thought I’d got a headache. Do you believe women? Having ruined everything, she trotted blithely off to find Tinker. I turned, and bumped into Nurse Siu Lin. She’s at Doc Lancaster’s, shapely, distrusts the ground I walk on.

  ‘If you need*medical help,’ I said, ‘you’ve had it.’

  She is all teeth and dimples when she smiles. She walks with speed, every stroll a twenty-kilometre Olympic. ‘Thought you’d be in training for Sunday, Lovejoy.’

  In spite of myself I found I walked along, trying to keep abreast. ‘Look, love, what is this Sunday thing?’

  She stopped. A police motor slowed, accelerated on past. Maudie Laud glanced at Nurse Lin, not at me. Everything was odd lately, so what’s in a glance?

  ‘You really don’t know, Lovejoy?’ she marvelled. She’s from Hong Kong, so I’ve a soft spot for her, even if she does help Doc Lancaster to make us all dead of health.

  ‘What actually happens?’ Simon Doussy and his posh mates were now talking angrily with a police constable. Maudie Laud was reversing, ten-point turn to reach the scene of Liffy’s crime. Nurse Lin eyed me.

  ‘It’s very therapeutic, Lovejoy. It’s encounter-with-therapy motivational adventurism ...’ I heard, in all her crap methodology, some ominous nouns: ‘fortnight’, ‘report’, ‘psychosomatic’. She was describing an extraterrestrial escapade, which is just not me.

  ‘Look, love,’ I said. ‘Nobody’s sadder than me, but I can’t go. I’m not ducking out. It’s my bedridden Uncle Erasmus. I’ve promised to go and see to him. Tell Doc I’d go like a shot - ’

  Dolly’s motor drew up. ‘You can’t, Lovejoy,’ Nurse Lin was wailing as I climbed in. You have to adopt the foetal position to get into Dolly’s car and crouch like a neonate. ‘The horses are ready! The patients - ’

  ‘My apologies, love,’ I said, signalling to Dolly. She managed three gear changes a yard, but definitely forward. ‘Maybe next time,’ I bawled. I would have bussed Dolly for her superb rescue, but could only move a hand.

  Dolly said primly, ‘I’m driving! And never in public.’

  ‘Sorry, love. Accidental.’

  ‘Your hand is never accidental,’ Dolly said sternly. I could have eaten her. ‘My husband is home, Lovejoy. What are we going to do?’

  One thing I hate is this plural women use. Possessions: they talk singular, I, me, all that. Problems: they switch to the plural, what’re we going to do.

  ‘Drop me at the Post Office, love.’ I did a quick think. ‘I’ll send a telegram. My pal’ll know how to handle George.’

  ‘Frederick,’ Dolly said, the pest. ‘My husband’s Frederick. It’s time it was out in the open, Lovejoy,’ she said soulfully.

  ‘Yes, dwoorlink,’ I said, with sincerity. But what the hell had I got to do with her husband, for heaven’s sake? I think women are getting even less organized than they used to be.

  Maudie Laud had me pulled in as we reached the village. For once I was glad to see the peelers, and bade a fond so long to an outraged Dolly. The police car drove me to safety.

  These cops. The Plod motor streaked into town wahwahing.

  ‘How many pedestrians d’you lot kill a day?’ I asked.

  The assistant uniformed idler leant and thumped me in the face. My head spun. All I could see were swirling dots. ‘That’s enough from you, prat.’ The motor rounded a bus. Oncoming traffic screeched.

  ‘In the county, I mean.’

  They’re so undermanned that they have only one idler per car. His job is to watch the driver drive, and knuck citizens. This yob brought blood to my lip. I hoped it was prominent.

  ‘Stop, Mac,’ he said. ‘The embankment. I’ll do this fucker.’

  ‘Seriously.’ I tried to sound like those TV newsreaders that can’t read the idiot boards. ‘What’ve you got against people?’

  He unclipped his seat belt to clobber me. I bobbed as best I could, but keeping my seat belt legally fastened.

  ‘Cross,’ the driver remonstrated, offhand, ‘we’re in town.’

  ‘The bastard.’ Constable Cross caught me two good ones.

  Pedestrians were looking into the motor now, at a traffic light. I made a great show of mopping the blood from my face. I wound the window down, said to a kindly old dear, ‘Love, can you call a policeman? These kidnappers - ’

  The car took off, G force pressing me against the upholstery. By now my nosebleed covered much of it. I’d spread it about. Cross was examining his hands. My cheekbones had cruelly grazed the skin.

  We pulled into the cop shop yard by the roundabout. There’s a ruined Roman temple standing proud of a green tummock next to the cop shop. Satan always gets the best tunes.

  Slyly I didn’t undo my seat belt, and stayed somnolent when Cross snapped, ‘Out.’ Mac was more alert, almost looking awake. I closed my eyes. I’d streaked my hair with nose blood.

  ‘Oooogh.’ Not my best groan, but convincing. Few pass by because there’s only the Salvation Army and the tax gatherers. Still, any witness wouldn’t come amiss.

  Cross leant in to yank me out but the seat belt held. Cursing, he reached across in a stink of sweaty anger. I did my groan. ‘Crossie,’ the driver said, ‘watch it.’

  Eyes closed, I released the press clip as Cross gave a super tug. We catapulted out like corks from a bottle, me sprawling. I was really proud. A messy but superb performance.

  ‘For Christ’s sake, Crossie,’ the driver said.

  Feet clomped close, with voices. I did my groan. The two Plods babbled explanations in which truth didn’t quite make it. I was lifted. I collapsed in a heap. All fell silent. Then Maudie’s voice said, laconic, ‘Get him inside. You two, inside.’

  ‘It was like this, ma’am -’ Cross began, lies to the fore. ‘Noitwasnotlikethis,’ Maudie said, one word. ‘Clean him up. Doctor on call. And you - disciplinary charges forthwith.’

  ‘Yes, ma’am,’ some nerk intoned. ‘Written reports, booys.’

  For a bird with a soft delivery, she made her voice prophesy untold harm. My blood, what bit I had left, ran cold. She departed. Nice legs, for the Old Bill. I allowed myself to be carried, making sure my head did a lot of lolling.

  The process took a full hour, time I could have used. I wondered if I might get paid for my suffering. Money is dear bought - it costs more than I can afford. And law delays justice until the suffering have suffered to extinction. The police surgeon was noncommittal and brusque. I was offered tea by an apprehensive policewoman. Maudie came in -1 was on a wooden bench - and sat opposite. I was astonished she wasn’t covered in silver braid.

  ‘Lovejoy. You’re useless, fake-wise. Everything the hard way.’ What can you say to crud? ‘Listen, missus. If I wanted to make money from fakery I’d nick Leamington Spa railway station’s wooden benches from their waiting rooms. Twelve. Convert them into three sixteenth-century court cupboards, that goons call buffet cupboards.’ I smiled with delight at the thought. ‘Nick their two tables as well, I’d knock you up two brace of joiner armchairs. Great Civil War period.’

  ‘Stop it, Lovejoy.’ She was the most assured bird I’d ever met. ‘I am going to put a few questions. Be precise.’

  ‘Eleven,’ I said, through swollen lips. ‘Tell Cross.’

  ‘Eleven what?’ She glanced at the tape recorder. The charade includes taped interviews, the time-place-date-observer bit jokingly specified in the Police and Criminal Evidence Act.

  ‘People killed by police motors. Cross was having a laugh.’

  ‘The events will emerge in the inquiry.’ She was laconic. I wondered if they all went to acting school for promotion. ‘What is the relationship between you and Mrs. Arden?’

  ‘You know, Corporal. She helped a charity, and bid for me.’ She didn’t know whether to believe me. Now, this was new. She’d believed me not long since. ‘And Carl’s lady friend?’

  What was this? Good old Carl had seemed ballbroken, reduced to ferrying scruffs for his missus. Could
such a serf secretly be pleasuring a bonny lass? These things happen, I’ve heard.

  ‘Look, love. The county set’s not my scene.’

  She eyed me, her gaze latching on blood in my hair. I’d deliberately not washed up there to keep the sympathy vote. ‘Very well.’ The Plod have two different minds rattling around their capacious noddles. One mind’s humdrum, how-much-is-petrol mundanity. The other mind hates trust, wants to hit everyone with savage abandon.

  ‘Eh?’ I gasped in disbelief at what she’d said. ‘Sorry, Constable. Didn’t hear you. Your lads beat me deaf - ’

  ‘You heard, Lovejoy. What is the specific gravity of gold?’ ‘Gold?’ I said stupidly, wonderment cubed.

  ‘As compared to diamonds. Confine your reply to fact.’

  Lost, I hurt my face with a frown that made me yelp. ‘Gold?’ I made cautious inquiry. Cunning to the last. ‘You mean as compared to diamonds?’

  She said nothing. See what I mean about peelers? She could easily have offered a helpful comment, It’s like this, Lovejoy ... to oil things. She sat still as a stoat.

  Gold? Diamonds? The gold mention was to put me off, right? Stray brain cells grappled to synapse ideas but failed.

  ‘Diamond’s density is 3.52. Gold’s miles off, 19.3, give or take a yard.’ She stayed mute. I waxed on, gathering steam. ‘As different as can be. Odd, really. Diamond’s so hard the miners used to try smashing crystals with a sledgehammer, thinking if it withstood the blow it was true diamond. Except,’ I said with genuine sorrow, ‘they didn’t understand crystal cleavage. Gold has no real cleavage. It’s softer, 2.5 to 3.0 on the old Mohs scale. That doesn’t mean,’ I explained, watching her face for clues, ‘it’s a quarter as hard as diamond, which scores 10.0. It depends how you test it. Ordinary talc scores one, gypsum two, then soft old calcite three. Gold’s a mite softer than calcite, okay? On the Knoop scratch scale, though, diamond’s thirty times harder than gold. See?’

  Silence. What the hell did she want? Investments?

  ‘Diamond doesn’t stretch,’ I resumed. ‘But gold’s so ductile that a single grain - 5,760 grains to a pound weight - can be drawn into wire five hundred feet long!’ She didn’t applaud, to my annoyance. ‘Gold leaf is quarter of a millionth of an inch thick! You have to polish diamond, takes an age ... ’ My saga went lame. ‘Gold loves being twisted. That’s why torcs - gold collars for ancient British kings - are twisted more than other metals could stand. Drop gold into a stream, bury it for three thousand years, up it comes bright as a button!’

  Watch it, Lovejoy! my adrenals shrieked, spurting adrenaline in a gusher. Treasure hunters wouldn’t thank me for blabbing of the pre- Roman torcs. She spoke.

  ‘Could an ancient gold tore be excavated, then made into ancient jewellery, chalices, cups?’

  ‘Yes,’ adding the swift disclaimer, ‘I bet.’

  ‘And for it to be done so carefully that even the very best scientific investigators could not prove it modern?’

  ‘Yes. Only supposing, mind,’ I added.

  ‘Just as I, too, am only supposing that you might know these things, Lovejoy.’ I didn’t like that. ‘Diamonds ... ?’

  ‘You can’t age diamonds, love. You can only age their setting, the jewellery of which they form a part.’ I brightened. ‘But you can fake a diamond. That help? Some new simulants are great. The older ones are easily detected. Give themselves away by refracting double when you look through, as if you’re squinting.’

  ‘Can you age gold?’

  I was becoming interested. ‘You can add trace elements, of the sort that contaminate gold from the ancient world.’ I caught myself. ‘Don’t you have tame scientists? The ones,’ I added nastily, ‘in your secret laboratories near Chislehurst?’

  A glimmer of amusement showed. ‘Thank you, Lovejoy. Now, why is there so much charity work on my manor?’

  A knock sounded. The policewoman came, whispered. Maudie’s lips thinned, a promising sign.

  ‘He will be out directly,’ she said in fury. ‘Lawyers, Lovejoy?’ Lawyers? I have no lawyers. I have tax gatherers, homicidal constables, creditors, women badgering me to get married ... Dolly! Dolly had lawyers, dentists, accountants. She kept lists of them in a red notebook, blue for engagements.

  ‘Thank you, Bombardier.’ I made my way to the door. She made no demur, just accompanied me to the corridor. From there I saw Dolly clutching her handbag, pretty as a picture, between two besuited gents in postures of disapproval. I asked shakily,- ‘Is it safe, Sergeant? They won’t beat me again ...’

  Dolly leapt forward with a cry and extricated me. I tottered out to her motor while the lawyers chanted their rituals and fluttered papers.

  ‘Darling!’ Dolly said, torn between fire-bombing the police and caring for me. ‘The Chief Constable will hear about this!’

  With a groan, I told her to phone the Home Secretary. It was a joke, but Dolly told me she already had. We drove sedately out. I told her to take the hospital route.

  ‘Love,’ I said. ‘Who is Mr. Arden’s lady?’

  There was ample time on the two-mile journey. Dolly’s driving has a comatose air all its own. At an empty crossroad she stares forty times in each direction in case of lurking motors, then putters forward in first gear - by which time, of course, a column of demented motorists is trailing behind, coronary arteries clanging.

  ‘Knee, Lovejoy,’ Dolly said sternly. ‘I’m beginning to think you’re not quite as injured as you appear,’ she said, pretty mouth set in rebuke. Lips are odd. Some women thin their lips and it’s a threat. Others do the same and only look delectable and make you think lustful thoughts. ‘I said knee, Lovejoy.’

  ‘Sorry, sorry. I overbalanced. Carl Arden?’

  ‘Mrs. Deirdre Divine is disgracing herself. It’s a public scandal, and her husband hardly cold in his grave. I blame the wife,’ she threw in with crazy logic.

  Of course, I thought. Women always blame the bird. Logic is for losing track of. ‘Poor thing,’ I said, to keep her going. She inched up, a heady ten mph.

  ‘Mrs. Arden was irresponsible when her first husband started to drink. Didn’t stand by him a single minute!’

  ‘God rest him,’ I said piously, wanting more.

  ‘Such a clever man - a scientist, metal chemistry, I think. Did wonderful work, despite his weakness.’

  Dolly has only three grades of calamity. The ‘weakness’ is due to one’s own intransigence: Raddie’s sexual proclivity is an example, drunkenness and the Methodist persuasion others. More severe is the ‘disappointment’, which covers harlotry to financial fraud. Dolly’s sternest condemnation: to ‘misbehave’, encompassing murder, high treason, and failing to feed your garden bluetits by eight thirty. I like Dolly, and not just because she’d just sprung me from Castle Otranto. She meant a wino, confirming Loafer’s account. And a metal chemist, maybe gold?

  ‘Poor man,’ I murmured.

  To the traffic’s joy, she parked and rummaged for tissues. ‘You’re so sweet, Lovejoy. So badly hurt, and you still show sympathy!’ Put that way, I was so touched I almost welled up myself from finer feelings. She sniffed herself dry.

  ‘Now, Lovejoy, let us get on.’ She pulled out with cool disregard of other vehicles. ‘Why the hospital road?’ She smiled demurely. ‘Because there’s a layby there? Lovejoy, you are incorrigible!’ ‘You guessed!’ I lied with a shrug. ‘We haven’t had a good - ’ ‘Lovejoy!’ she said, scandalized. ‘Language!’

  ‘Sorry.’ The two blokes who’d been knifed were likely to be still in hosptial. I tried to think of a way of postponing snogging with Dolly until we reached the cottage. Something pleasantly innocent would occur to me, with luck.

  The hospital’s gone ineffably modern, so patients can catch legionnaire’s disease free of charge. They spent so much money installing air conditioners that they haven’t the money to take them down now they’ve proved lethal.

  ‘Look, Dolly.’ The hospital car park only has room for two prams and a three-whee
ler. ‘I wanted somewhere to talk.’ Women think speech is an infallible index of feelings, whereas I don’t trust words. ‘I understand, dear,’ she said mistily.

  The Bentley would be across the Channel by nightfall, so I had to get a move on. But this hospital visit was important. ‘Look, dwoor- link..

  ‘Yes, Lovejoy?’

  ‘You know how I feel, Dolly. Always have, ever since we met in the vestry.’ She is our church treasurer. ‘It’s just that ...’ I gave a really genuine passion-riven hesitation. ‘Well, your husband.’

  She sighed at my inner beauty. ‘You’re a lovely man, d’you know that?’ Well, yes, but I needed to get inside the surgical wards. ‘So compassionate!’ I hastily looked compassionate. ‘But if we’re to make a life together - ’

  ‘I’m so glad you said that, Dolly.’ I looked so glad, because the town bus entered the hospital drive. We were blocking it. Annoyed, she started the engine. ‘I’ll park on the road.’

  ‘Love,’ I smiled brightly, ‘there’s a canteen. You park, I’ll be waiting. This is too important to interrupt.’

  I shot out as her motor kangarooed off, and went in.

  ‘I’m from Doctor Lancaster,’ I told the receptionist. ‘Message for those two blokes brought in after the stabbing.’

  ‘Access denied,’ she said in that monotone jack-a’-backs use on underlings. ‘Ward Three is under police guard.’ She was used to subservience. But I had the habit of a lifetime. I grovelled, really thrilled at such an august personage.

  ‘Thank you, Mrs. Prescott,’ I said. ‘I’ll tell the police surgeon no.’

  She had to come running. I almost made the door. ‘A message from the police surgeon?’

  ‘Shhh,’ I said quietly, trying to sound Special Branch. ‘Don’t send word. I know the way.’ That shut her up.

  Among limping orthopaedic patients and trolleys bearing the moribund I reached a quiet backwater where a policeman stood lusting at passing nurses. I waited with the hospital visitor’s inscrutable patience - hands folded, leaning on a wall. Within ten minutes he deserted his post and headed off. A pause, then I sauntered into Ward Three. No nurses, except for one scribbling at a desk. One door gave passing rogues a clue: ‘POLICE NO ADMITTANCE’.